Hi All,
A few of you have been mentioning of late that you miss our news updates.
My workload has significantly increased over the past two years, which is why - I think - some things have had to slip. However, family connections should not be one of those things, because I think it's important.
But at the same time, I have have been doing a bit of research on what helps people get through the PhDs, and funnily enough, a key thing is simply writing. So in order to hone my writing muscles, last November I signed up to a website kept by a couple of Californians, called 750words. The idea behind Buster and Kellianne's website is that you write 750 words every day, and that kickstarts your creativity and builds your writing habit.
So since 11 November last year I have kept a daily dairy, and have written lots of my business blog posts through this mechanism. iin other words, I have been writing up what Jan and I have been doing, but I just haven't been posting it to our family blog.
I have given myself a metaphorical kick in the backside, and am going to aim to upload our news every two months as two short 'monthly' written updates write updates rather than creating videos or posting images (because it takes less thinking time, and is therefore 'easier'). I will, as usual, send out the email links to you once more as soon as I've uploaded.
So. What follows is a link to each month which you can click through to all that we have done this year since I caught you all up last in January, with August's news below these links:
- February: Westport to spectate at the Buller Half Marathon, PhD derail, Frits's birthday celebration
- March: harvest time and Taupo
- April: mega-migraine, visitors, puppy yearnings and movies
- May: Concert, friends, dogs and nature
- June: Wrist surgery, lunches, lakes and Uncle Eddie
- July: Victoria leadership lecture trip, driving, mid-winter Xmas, orchestra, new Uni
Jan caught up with Gary and Karen when they did the Queen Charlotte track in Marlborough recently, along with Max and Karen, Tracey and Erica:
Towards the end of the month we flew to Sydney, then hopped on a train, and travelled four days across the Nullarbor to Perth. Why would we do that? A friend of ours, Ian, was having a pretty significant birthday, and had always wanted to do the trip. Ian and Sharon were going, and had asked a few other people if they wanted to go. Jan had always wanted to do a longer train trip, and I was reasonably keen, so we teed it up.
The timing meant I had to miss a week of lectures, but I had planned that week in back in May, so there was no problem. I set tests and tutorial work for the week so the students weren't disadvantaged.
We started in Sydney with a delicious birthday dinner for Ian at Essen, a German restaurant close by UTS (and just down the road from the Mercure, where we stayed overnight).
The next day, Sharon's cousin Glenn took us out for lunch to the Sydney Fish Market, where we ate far too much gorgeous fish, and I finally tried Barramundi. A bit too soft in texture for me, but Jan loved it.
At 2pm we rocked up at the train station, and were shown to our berths. Despite being small, the cabins contained all you needed, and were more spacious than I thought they would be. We had four days of enforced idleness, looking at the world going past. Jan had some study to do, and I spent a couple of hours each day reading and writing my PhD research methodology. The rest of the time we were playing games, walking up and down the train, talking to people, taking photos, and listening to books and music... and eating.
Man alive, they fed you well. Everything was included: snack food, morning and afternoon tea, coffee, teas, cocktails, bubbly... wow.
We stopped at Broken Hills for three hours on the first full day, the next day for the afternoon and evening in Adelaide, then Cook on the third day for half an hour, followed by dinner under the stars for a couple of freezing hours at Rawlinna (and pretty much only sitting down), then no stops on the last day until we hit Perth.
We were supposed to do a walking tour in Adelaide, but we found that they were going to take an hour and a half to walk a couple of kilometres, so we cut out of the tour and did our own walking tour through the CBD, just meeting up with the rest of the company at the Adelaide Wine Centre, in time for dinner.
The age of most of the passengers looked to be 60s to 80s, so I felt rather too young. They were all nice enough people, but it did feel a bit like a retirement village.
For me it was an OK experience. Jan really enjoyed it. I found it a bit too confining, as there was not enough opportunity to walk around on the third and fourth day; although I had really thought that it would be Jan who felt that way, not myself.
One of my work colleagues, Sue, has done the Trans-Siberian, and said that that was a great trip. That might be worth doing. She and Steve had stayed at Lake Baikal in the middle of the trip, which I think saved them from going stir crazy from the confinement.
When we got to Perth, we met up with Robyn, one of the Nayland old girls. Robyn used to work with my father at MAF, and used to play hockey for Waimai. She hosted us, toured us around Perth, and had us to stay at her place. We got to see Kings Park, South Perth, Fremantle, Victoria city and up the coast to Woodvale. We had a lovely walk along the new waterfront development in the CBD. It is going to be quite spectacular when it is finished. The bell tower on the waterfront has used bells imported from St Martin’s in the Fields in London for its carillon. It is also going to cast a new ANZAC bell as a ‘great bell’ shortly, which will be quite cool.
It is a very picturesque place, with lots of green areas, and some really interesting development. It has been hit by the mining downturn, but I think that is something that is affecting all of Australia at present.
I will create a movie from the trip photos and video sometime soon, and will post it below. For now though, just a few key photos:
Our flight home was pretty uneventful - aside from neither of us being able to sleep. Oh, and the movie that Jeremy was in - A Letter for Hope - was on the AirNZ film list on plane when we flew home (I was so excited)!
I will be down in Christchurch in October, as I am presenting some research that a colleague and I at NMIT are doing on employer cybervetting. Staying with Jenny.
Jan too is in Chch in September and October - a week each month for his NEBOSH course. I am sure he would love to catch up with as many Cantabrians as he can :-)
My sister is, I think, heading off to America in November, and I assume that sometime soon after that we will get a date for the wedding... with hopefully enough time to arrange good flights to Maryland to help celebrate.
Sam (& Jan).
